The first return from marketing the brand is that we are bringing in more visitors and artists. There are more than 20,000 artists in the city, which for some places would be a festival in itself.
When we go out into the world, we do a number of things. We are doing consumer marketing, which is dependent on the strength of the cultural brand. We are also engaging in high-level cultural diplomacy and relationship marketing, which is about perception.
More broadly, we are engaging actively with artists and producers, and encouraging them to come back here to enhance what happens on the platforms of our different festivals.
Every one of those things contributes, some in more subtle ways. Our consumer marketing is about increasing the number of visitors and the visitor spend. Ultimately, from our selfish perspective, it is about bringing more people into the city to buy tickets, but every time that happens, they extend their spend. There is a direct value from building the brand internationally.
On the cultural diplomacy side, we definitely see ourselves as part of team Scotland when we are out visiting a country. When I was in China, I met both artists and cultural organisations. We were part of a travel trade fair working with VisitScotland and VisitBritain, and I also held inward investment meetings for Edinburgh while I was there.
We do not do that on every occasion. We will normally get into partnership, if we can, with Scottish Development International on the ground, and we will meet its representatives. To give another example, the director of the international festival has held launches for his programme around the world in connection with SDI’s programme. We also encourage SDI and partners at a diplomatic level to ensure that the business community is engaging in that work.
There is a sense that we are conveying, with our very strong cultural brand, an image of a dynamic, outward-looking connected country that is engaged in exchange in both directions. That exchange matters. We cannot just go out there and say, “We’re fabulous”—we are also learning from and connecting and exchanging ideas with those countries.